Green For a Season
by Dayadhvam
Summary: These are the small things that let her remember, that keep their fleeting moments within the depths of her mind.


**Title:** Green For a Season  
**Author:** Dayadhvam  
**Rating/Pairings:** PG. Some Hohenheim/Trisha.  
**Summary:** These are the small things that let her remember, that keep their fleeting moments within the depths of her mind.  
**Notes:** A b-day ficlet for **array of colors**, who gave me the prompt _Ed and Al's first time fixing broken material objects_. Er, it twisted and turned along its own merry path to Trisha Elric's POV. :P Title is from Algernon Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine." And Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Arakawa.

* * *

_When they met for the tenth time, she braided a crown of wildflowers for him and placed it jauntily upon his head. "I don't suppose you'd let me work some into your beard, would you?" she asked, tilting her head and looking at how the pale green and yellow and white of the flowers rested on bright gold hair. "I think it would suit you very well."_

_"I would beg to disagree!" There was mock indignation in his voice as he pulled up some of the grass and tossed it at her; she turned, giggling, and ran some distance before looking back._

_He hadn't followed. He sat in the grass, shoulders thrown back and head cocked to the side, and watched her, a wistful look on his face and lonely shutters over his eyes. Then he smiled—the closed, bare look vanishing—and rose to his feet, brushing away errant pieces of weeds. "Don't run so fast, will you?" he said. "Otherwise I won't be able to catch up to you."_

_"I'll run slower if you like," she called back, making a pert curtsy. "But I can't wait forever, you know, so start running yourself!"_

**oOo**

The basket smelt faintly of petunias, and it confused her for a moment. Then she remembered that she'd stopped by the Rockbell place the day before to drop off some flowers for little Winry, who had proceeded to tuck as many as she could into Den's collar. She'd left the flowers in the basket before gathering them all in her hands.

She sighed and began to pick up the tomatoes, putting them in her apron and bunching them together. She'd been rather fond of it, especially since it had that lovely straw braiding around the edges, but the bottom of the weaved basket must have been fraying. Curious that the entire bottom should fall out; she glanced thoughtfully at the hole. It wasn't a huge loss, though. Only, the tomatoes… Trisha inspected one and frowned at the bruising that had appeared along the left side.

Most of them had managed to escape the wrath of an unfortunate fall since she'd acted quickly and caught some, but she counted at least four which were beyond saving for dinner. They were still useful, at least; she made sure that the garden never lacked for compost.

"Ed! Al!" she called, taking up a knife and cutting the tomatoes into quarters.

There was the pitter-patter of footsteps before the boys poked their heads around the doorway. There was a smudge of ink on Ed's nose and Al still gripped a book in his hands. _Burrowing into the stacks again, are they_? She smiled fondly at them and motioned them over. "Take these out to the garden and bury them around the plants," she instructed.

"Er, why?" Al looked nonplussed, blinking at the tomato slices, but Ed gave him a smack on the shoulder. "Silly! It's because they're going to fall apart and de—de-com-_pose_," he said, drawing out the last word and relishing the syllables; more precisely, relishing the meaning of the word with all the fascination of a boy his age.

"So what happened?" Al persisted.

"I was going to make tomato soup, but the basket broke and some of them fell out," Trisha said patiently. "You see?" She tilted the basket so they could see the hole. "A very big hole indeed." She glanced at them.

"Oh…" Ed said. He shuffled his feet and looked away from the basket toward the corner of the kitchen window—it was far too nonchalant a motion for it to be innocent.

"Ed?" She picked up one of the saved tomatoes and began to rinse it. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?" She could play the innocence game just as well as they could.

"No! I don't know anything!" he blurted, and started to sidle toward the exit, hand in hand with Al.

_Ah, so he does know something_. Sometimes her children's attempts to conceal their shenanigans were far too amusing. The corners of her mouth twitched up. "Really?" she asked teasingly. "Don't forget the tomatoes—"

Al was always more open than Ed was. He also had a better idea of when to give up the innocent act. "Wait, brother, but mother's basket—"

"He didn't say anything!" Ed shouted.

"Sorry, mother!" Al blurted in direct contradiction of his brother. "We didn't mean to! We—mmph, Ed, stoppi—"

"Let your brother speak, Ed." She crossed her arms and gave her eldest son a Very Disappointed Look (as they always called it); he dropped his hand from Al's mouth and mumbled something inaudibly.

"Say it louder, Ed."

"We were just playing soldiers." He fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. "It got a little crushed—

but it's fine now, really!"

"I wouldn't call the basket very fine now," Trisha said, looking over at the basket with a critical eye. "You could have told me it was torn earlier."

"Yeah, but then you'd ground us and you wouldn't let us go play with Winry," Ed grumbled. "We fixed it anyway, it's not our fault it's broken now."

"I see," she said. "I was wondering why it was more bumpy around this line than usual." She had not seen it at first when she picked it up, but now she could see the unevenness if she looked closely. "In that case, you'll just have to fix the basket all over again."

"But mother, we--"

"You've already fixed it once, haven't you? You just have to do your best." She smiled distantly and ran her fingers over the braiding, the lines winding around each other to form the shapes of distorted wildflowers.

**oOo**

_When they separated for the last time, she stood in the doorway of their home, her body outlined by the straggling rays of sunshine that snaked their way over the land. "Perhaps you should say goodbye to the boys?" she asked, staring at him and trying to memorize the rough-hewn planes of his face, the swinging way he walked, the sunlight crowning his head with circles of gold—the essence of him, down to the way strands of glinting hair lay across the rims of his glasses. His was a special kind of messiness._

_She nearly missed his response. "I'd rather not," he said heavily, adjusting his bag. "You can tell them when they're older—maybe some day they'll come looking for me, who knows?" He chuckled, but there was no mirth in his voice. She heard only the yawning emptiness, the abyss of his immortality from which he had yet to escape._

_"No," she said. "You will come back." She wished she could will her statement to be truth, to be an indisputable reality. "I won't go and leave you hanging; you can try to do the same for me."_

_He said nothing; gave her a pained, strained look and took her hand in his, then bent down low and pressed his lips against the back of her hand with the faintest pressure. "I—do not try to promise anything," he said. His breath passed over her hand fleetingly before he straightened again to his full height. "Except that I'll do what I can."_

_"I already knew that." She waved her hand in the air and tried hard to smile. "I'll make your favorite soup for you when you get back."_

_"Of course," he said._

**-fin-**

* * *

The title is from:

_Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;  
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.  
Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;  
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.  
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;  
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides._  
—Algernon Swinburne, "Hymn to Proserpine"

First FMA fic I've written, and it feels strange to write Ed and Al as little kids, and Trisha... :( The chasing/waiting theme kept popping up, with the running representing how Trisha's traveling the road of life towards death while Hohenheim is stuck in stasis.

Reviews are always lovely and much appreciated. :)


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